Julia Roberts: Her Allure Photo Shoot

Julia Roberts's name is so synonymous with "movie star," it's hard to believe it's been forever since her last big starring role. Now she's back with two movies—Duplicity with costar Clive Owen and Fireflies in the Garden—and ready to talk about her life and loves.

For the cover shot, makeup artist Genevieve Herr said she wanted to "enhance Julia's features without overpowering her with makeup." She started with tinted moisturizer, then blended pink cream blush on her cheeks. Next, she rimmed Roberts's eyes with violet eyeliner, dusted purple shadow on her lids, and applied black mascara to her lashes.

Being the only woman in Ocean's Eleven and Twelve, Roberts says, had its ups and downs: "People go, 'There you are with Brad and George and Matt. You're so lucky!' Well, I also went to my hotel room door one morning, and they had shaving-creamed my door and put two huge potted trees outside, trying to make me late for work," she recalls. Here, Roberts poses in a vintage silk dress by Ossie Clark and leather sandals by Oscar de la Renta.

Hairstylist Serge Normant—who has known Roberts for 15 years—gave the actress a beachy style. "Julia has great natural texture in her hair, so I kept it wavy and simple," he says. Starting with wet hair, he spritzed volumizing spray on her roots and blew it dry with a round brush. He then loosely curled random sections with a curling iron and smoothed flyaways with a silicone cream. "I left the rest to the wind and the mist," says Normant, shown here.

Roberts says her most recent films are an intentional departure from romantic comedies. "I don't believe that somebody would go to a movie and look at me and say that I have [those] problems anymore," says the actress, "I mean, who wants to see me twirling my hair, going, 'Oh, I wish he loved me'?" During her Allure shoot, Roberts's children, four-year-old twins Finn and Hazel and one-and-a-half-year-old Henry, visited the set. One of their books became a key prop here.

"Early on, I worked with Richard Gere and Denzel and Dennis Quaid and Mel Gibson, and all these profoundly smart, handsome guys. I was lucky enough to be part of their lives and become friends with them, and it is interesting to understand a solid perspective of the male psyche as a person who's nonthreatening to that guy. Men are so revealing when they're not trying to woo you, when you're not intimidated or being flirty, when you're just interested." Here, the actress chats with Thompson between shots.

Even Roberts has been on the receiving end of a foot-in-the-mouth-moment. She recalls a moment on the set of her latest film, Duplicity. "Just when you think you're getting your shit together, someone says, 'When is your baby due?' I had Henry on my hip, and it was like, 'This is my baby.' It hurt my feelings so bad! I think the second-meanest thing you can say to somebody is, 'You look tired.' Why do people say that? Just tell me I look like a mom! Don't tell me I look tired."

Roberts's take on being a working mother: "Acting fulfills me in a creative way that has this myopic focus—and it gives me something to talk about at dinner," she says. "That can't be underrated, really. A lot of the mom struggle in life is that everything happens within the four walls of the home, and it can lose its luster a bit, maybe. You just have to bring in from outside sometimes."